Expensive EDA tools

Nowaday, it is difficult to start a fabless IC company, because they need to invest a lot of money to buy enpensive EDA tools up front.

Synthesis, RTL simulator, P&R, layout verification, timing verification, etc. Each of these tools cost around $50~$100K a piece. A big chuck of funding is already burn upon software installation.

It is not EDA companies over charging their customers. It is due to the fact that chip design is getting more complicate, engineers indeed need more tools to solve the problem.

Some argue to build free open source EDA tools. But I doubt if this will work.

EDA tools are complicate software, and it is used to improve productivity. Perhaps someone can write a free EDA tool that works. I doubt it could ever match the accuracy and speed of a commercial tool.

Free EDA Users Group